Galena Park teen arrested for terroristic Twitter post

Published 1:59 pm, Tuesday, January 8, 2013

A North Shore Senior High School sophomore was arrested early Tuesday morning after FBI officials found a terroristic threat on his Twitter account, a school spokesman said.

The student apparently made a threat directed at his high school via Twitter at 8:45 p.m. Monday and the FBI then contacted Galena Park Independent School District officials, said district spokesman Jonathan Frey.

Harris County Precinct 3 deputies arrested the young man before school at around 6 a.m. Tuesday. The student is not named because he is a juvenile.

FBI officials detained and interviewed the student. Agents told the district the student did not have the ability to carry out his threat, Frey said. He did not know the specifics of the threat.

The student remains in custody.

Last year, the news broke that the FBI was looking for an app that would basically help the agency monitor publicly available material like Facebook and Twitter for national security threats.

Frey said he did not know the magnitude of the consequences the student would face from the district.

"I feel strongly at least that he will understand the word 'consequences' very soon," Frey said. "I don't know what will happen specifically, but we do not tolerate as a school or as educators any type of threat in that manner."

Frey hopes that incidents such as these will remind parents to stay abreast of what their children are doing on social networks.

The arrest follows a recent incident at the school district when deputies were alerted to a North Shore High School senior's threat to hurt himself through Twitter. Less than an hour after he posted his warnings, the student somehow managed to shoot himself in the back of the head in a police car as the deputies were trying to take him somewhere to protect him.

The December incident raised questions about how school districts and authorities monitor students' growing social media use in Houston-area school districts.